A/N: Yet again, thanks to Lilsherlockian1975 for beta'ing this thing for me.

The Decoy Wife

"Molly, what do you know about being an accountant's wife?"

She lifted her head from her microscope, bemused. "Idle curiosity or are you looking for something specific?"

Molly swivelled to face the door Sherlock had just come through, and nearly fell off her lab stool. "Oh my God, what did you do?"

His hair had been combed back and tamed until there was hardly a trace of his usual curls. His suit looked odd, almost as if it was a size or two larger than normal. As if it had been purchased off the rack at a department store.

It was clearly Sherlock and yet . . . not.

"I took a case, obviously." He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a pair of dark rimmed glasses; and a kink Molly hadn't even known she'd possessed had blossomed fully-born into her brain.

And lower.

Much lower.

Sherlock slipped the glasses on, and Molly's mouth watered.

He looked at her oddly (she must look ridiculous, gaping at him like a deranged fish), then down at his suit jacket and grimaced. "It's not up to my usual standards, I know. However, I felt it would be more in keeping with an average middle class accountant from Ipswich than Spencer Hart and Dolce & Gabbana."

"Yes, that-that's probably true. Yes." And now she was stuttering again. Molly wanted to smack herself in the forehead for acting so silly, but the man who already had a starring role in several of her favourite fantasies had just become a headliner in one or two very specific naughty thoughts and she couldn't help being a tiny bit distracted.

"So. Wife?"

Molly blinked several times until she caught back up with the conversation. "Oh, right. I would assume they're just like any other kind of wife. I suppose it would be helpful if they knew something about maths, but I don't imagine it would be a requirement to a happy marriage."

Sherlock frowned at her. "What does that have to do with anything?"

Now it was Molly's turn to frown. She hated it when he got that snippy tone with her. If he didn't currently look like an extra helping of sex on legs with those glasses, she might very well have told him she was busy and to go bother John. "You asked me what I knew about an accountant's wife."

"That was earlier." He waved his hand dismissively. "We've moved on from that."

"We have?" Did she miss something while she briefly imagined him wearing those glasses and a pair of designer boxer briefs and absolutely nothing else? She was willing to admit it was possible.

He rolled his eyes and reached into another pocket in his suit coat. He pulled a brochure free and tossed it on the workstation beside her. "Weekend marriage retreat, for couples who are having trust or intimacy issues. Two and a half days of counselling and seminars that are supposed to save a marriage in crisis."

Molly picked up the brochure and looked at the smiling couple with unnaturally white teeth and perfect hair on the cover. They appeared to be standing in front of a large, lovingly restored Victorian home somewhere picturesque. "They look cheerful. Are they supposed to be a success story?"

"In a way." Sherlock stepped closer to take the brochure from her hand, then he flipped it open and pointed to the blurb at the top of the page. "They're the owners and head counsellors. Apparently, they're teaching the secrets to their marital success, for a hefty sum."

She continued to skim over the rest of the information. "And your case?"

"Brother of one of the staff hasn't heard from his sister in three weeks. He didn't worry at first because there is almost no cellular signal on the retreat compound and the phone lines occasionally go out if it storms. However, she's never gone more than two weeks without a call or an email before."

Molly handed the brochure back. "Seems pretty straight forward, why do you need to pretend to be an accountant from Ipswich when you can just visit as Sherlock Holmes and ask to see her?"

"The last few months Anna had mentioned seeing someone, although she never gave her brother a name. The last time they spoke, she seemed upset and told him she'd be coming home after the latest session ended. Then nothing."

That didn't sound good. She could have changed her mind about staying, but the chances of that were fairly slim if Sherlock was interested enough to take the case. "You think something happened to her."

"I do." He tucked the brochure back into his suit coat, then leaned his hip against her workstation. "So, I'll ask again. Wife?"

It took three full beats of her heart for Molly to fully understand what he meant. "Have you lost your mind? I can't go undercover as your . . . as an accountant's wife!"

"Why not? You came with me on the Sandusky case."

She could see a hint of a pout already forming on his lips.

"You needed me to sit in a car and watch a door in case anyone tried to enter the building while you were poking around inside."

Now he looked annoyed. "I was not 'poking around'. I was conducting a very methodical search for evidence."

"For an hour and a half. While I sat in a freezing car with nothing to do but imagine various ways to murder you and not get caught. I came up with six, by the way."

He opened his mouth, then immediately shut it. After a long moment, he tried again. "I took you out for supper after, that should have warmed you up."

The fish and chips had been rather nice. "Still, sitting in a car pretending to be invisible is not the same thing as pretending to be married to-to someone."

Sherlock huffed. "You were engaged, just do whatever you and whatshisname did." His gaze fell to her left hand and then jerked to the side. "We're supposed to be having marital problems, perhaps it would be best to just stick to the sort of things you two did toward the end of your relationship."

The urge to tell him to bugger off grew ever stronger. "You mean fight bitterly and then have energetic make up sex on whatever surface was closest at the time?"

His eyes snapped back to hers, and he almost appeared to flush.

Molly continued. "Because that is a thing that definitely will not be happening if I agree to this insanity."

He swallowed hard enough that she could hear it. "The fighting?"

"The sex, you dolt. I'm fairly positive fighting won't be an issue; all you'll have to do is open your mouth."

For a second she thought he was going to retaliate with something scathing (perhaps an observation about how there had been a time when she wouldn't have been opposed to having sex with him) but he bit back whatever he'd been about to say and settled for, "Does that mean you'll do it?"

"Yes," Molly sighed. "But you owe me big because I had plans for this weekend."

"You were going to watch 'Pride and Prejudice' on DVD, drink a bottle of bargain basement red wine, and eat a tub of double fudge ripple ice cream."

"It was 'Sense and Sensibility' and I wasn't planning to do that until Sunday. I had other plans for Saturday." She glared. He ignored it. "Meena and I are going to start taking a cookery class."

Sherlock's brow furrowed in confusion. "You already know how to cook, why wou—Oh. You want to meet men."

Molly rolled her eyes and turned back to her microscope. "I know how to cook things that have instructions on the back of the box. I'd like to learn how to prepare something a bit more complex."

"And meet men." He sounded bitter. Why did he sound bitter?

"Would it make you feel better if I told you the class is entirely made up of women?" She cast a side-eyed look toward him.

"Is it?"

"No." Molly shook her head and then leaned into her scope, hoping he'd catch the hint. "Text me the details and let me know what sorts of clothes I'll need to bring. I've got to get back to work if I want to get all this done before the end of my shift."